Tuesday, September 09, 2014

Correction of the tip convolution effects in the imaging of nanostructures studied through scanning force microscopy

AFM images are always affected by artifacts arising from tip convolution effects, resulting in a decrease in the lateral resolution of this technique. The magnitude of such effects is described by means of geometrical considerations, thereby providing better understanding of the convolution phenomenon. We demonstrate that for a constant tip radius, the convolution error is increased with the object height, mainly for the narrowest motifs. Certain influence of the object shape is observed between rectangular and elliptical objects with the same height. Such moderate differences are essentially expected among elongated objects; in contrast they are reduced as the object aspect ratio is increased. Finally, we propose an algorithm to study the influence of the size, shape and aspect ratio of different nanometric motifs on a flat substrate. Indeed, with this algorithm, convolution artifacts can be extended to any kind of motif including real surface roughness. From the simulation resu...

Josep Canet-Ferrer, Eugenio Coronado, Alicia Forment-Aliaga and Elena Pinilla-Cienfuegos

Click for full article

No comments:

Post a Comment